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Saturday, August 31, 2013

Since I grew up in the northwest part of Wisconsin I've attended the Minnesota State Fair in Minneapolis instead of the Wisconsin State Fair which takes place on the east side of the state outside of Milwaukee. My favorite booths to always make a stop at are the political booths in order pick up the pins they have for sale. So even though I would never be able to vote in Minnesota elections I have many, many pins from Minnesota candidates. Here is my haul this year.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the DFL already selling "Hillary 2016" pins so I had to pick one up.

They had some Obama pins for sale that they already had but this one featuring Obama and the other Democratic presidents was something I hadn't seen before. It's interesting to me because they include Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams in the history of the Democratic Party when they were actually members of the Democratic-Republican Party. And although there is "Democrat" in their party's name they were more commonly referred to as "Republicans" at the time. Later the Democrat side would split from the Republican side and became what is still today the contemporary Democratic Party while the Republican side would eventually become the Whigs and fade from existence.

Friday, August 30, 2013

We are down in Chicago this week and staying in the Pilsen neighborhood. In the early 1900's this was the center of the Czech community in Chicago and today it is home to a vibrant Latino community. You can see that in the street art you can find nearly around every corner and this particular piece is one of the most beautiful I've found since starting this blog and documenting my graffiti/street art finds.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Although I'm now home in America, I'm going to keep posting as if we recently had these adventures around Europe. I'll post the dates we actually visited these locations at the start of each posts in an attempt to keep things straight.

The Guardians of the Kharkiv Art Musuem

Photographed: April 14th, 2013

I've not done any hard research on the matter but if I was to guess I would say that history and art museums in Ukraine must be the number one employer of women aged 40-65 in Ukraine. They are around every turn waiting for you to start talking loudly, share a loud laugh together, maybe grab a painting off the wall and make a break for it.

Inspired by this article from The Guardian about the guardians in museums in Russia I took photos of the guardians who populate the Kharkiv Art Museum. Some of the guardians took a more active role in "their guarding" and silently follow you around as you examined the works.

Some read books...

Or magazines...

Or maybe looking out the window every once in a while.

Another important part of the guardians jobs is to check our admission tickets three or four times over the course of our visit. This can be done sometimes two or three feet away from where we purchased the tickets and all within the guardians view.

Laura was getting the double team treatment in one of the larger rooms. This was the same room in which someone was tuning a piano that I posted about previously.

This will be Part 1 of my posts about visiting the Kharkiv Art Museum. Next time I'll show you some of the highlights of the museum's contents.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Although I'm now home in America, I'm going to keep posting as if we recently had these adventures around Europe. I'll post the dates we actually visited these locations at the start of each posts in an attempt to keep things straight.

A Little Yellow Church In Kiev

Photographed: April 11th, 2013

This little yellow chuch is the Church of the Birth of Christ was was originally built in 1814 and then rebuilt in 2005. I had no idea at the time of taking this photo but this is the church at which the Ukrainian poet and unofficial champion/mascot of this blog, Taras Shevchenko, was laid to rest while his body was transported back to his home in 1861. In 1930 the church was destroyed by the Communists and rebuilt 75 years later. There is a more famous yellow church in Kiev, St. Volodymyr's, but I like this one for its smaller size and more subtle mustard yellow color.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Our short term plan is to return to Kansas for the school year and so a few weeks ago my Dad and I took a load of stuff down to our storage space in Lawrence. While we were driving back we took a break at a way station in Iowa and as I was buying some vending machine snacks I noticed that the change machine accepted large denomination bills and gave out $1 coins.

My Dad is a numismatist, a.k.a a coin collector, and so this was a treasure trove as it is hard to find stores that give out the coins in their change. He keeps every state quarter he comes upon and so this was a chance to get many of the presidential dollar coins all at once. So it then became a slot machine that you really couldn't loose at. $5 went in and $5 came out, repeat. As you can see from the second photo, I think it made his day.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Although I'm now home in America, I'm going to keep posting as if we recently had these adventures around Europe. I'll post the dates we actually visited these locations at the start of each posts in an attempt to keep things straight.

A School Playground Ukrainian Style

Photographed: April 14th, 2013

While walking around our apartment in Kharkiv, during out last week there, we came upon this school with its Ukrainian-blue fence.

Continuing our walk along the fence though, I noticed that something didn't look quite normal in the back.

Moving out of the way of the pine tree you can see it looks to be what I guess is a Cossack warrior slaying a dragon. That knife looks very imposing and I can't quite tell if the red portion of the statue is just the inside of the dragon's mouth or blood from a stab wound.

Here's a more complete view of the action scene and you can see the warrior has stabbed the dragon in the mouth. I can only imagine what it would be like to try to take a short cut across the playground and coming across this statue in the middle of the night. You certainly won't see one of these on an American school's playground.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Although I'm now home in America, I'm going to keep posting as if we recently had these adventures around Europe. I'll post the dates we actually visited these locations at the start of each posts in an attempt to keep things straight.

Princess Olga of Kiev Statue

Visited: April 11th, 2013

In the square near St. Michael's Cathedral in Kiev you can find a monument to Princess Olga of Kiev who ruled the Kievan Rus from 945-964. Her husband Igor of Kiev was ruler until his death and Olga took power as their son was too young to rule.

Similarly to Queen Elizabeth much pressure was put on Olga to strategically marry princes from rival groups but she never did. She is honored near the Orthodox church because she was the first Kievan Rus leader to adopt Christianity.

Monday, August 19, 2013

Although I'm now home in America, I'm going to keep posting as if we recently had these adventures around Europe. I'll post the dates we actually visited these locations at the start of each posts in an attempt to keep things straight.

The View From My Window #19: Kiev

Photographed: April 11th, 2013

Here's the view from our apartment window on a hazy spring day in Kiev. Nothing too amazing to take notice but...

...what a difference a few hours and some car break lights make. I've done a couple of shutter speed experimentsbefore but I think that this was the best result I've had so far.

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Although I'm now home in America, I'm going to keep posting as if we recently had these adventures around Europe. I'll post the dates we actually visited these locations at the start of each posts in an attempt to keep things straight.

The Crimean Mountains

Visited: April 6th, 2013

I've written a few times about how the area around Kharkiv was geographically similar to the farm lands where we lived in Lawrence, Kansas. I'm afraid that doesn't give a 100% accurate picture of the topography we have run into in our travels. During one trip we made our way to the beginning of the Carpathian Mountains in the southwest side of Ukraine and while in Crimea we actually found some mountains. These are a little outside Bakhchysarai and are a pretty impressive change of pace.

On some of the cliffs people could hike up to the cliff wall and actually mountain climb up towards the top.

As a person who doesn't speak Russian, the sign on the cliff would either be telling me about the hiking park or that if a person isn't too careful on their hike they could fall off the side of the cliff.

Into the side of one of the mountains is located the Assumption Cave Monastery. It is said that a monastery existed there as early as the 8th century with the current monastery dating back to the 15th century. The monastery was also closed down during communism and reopened in the 1990's.

Photography wasn't allowed right near the site so I had to surreptitiously take some photos of it without angering the monks. There is also a holy spring at the site and many, many school children were filling up their water bottles for the ride home.

Although I'm now home in America, I'm going to keep posting as if we recently had these adventures around Europe. I'll post the dates we actually visited these locations at the start of each posts in an attempt to keep things straight.

The Khan's Palace

Visited: April 6th, 2013

Continuing on our tour of the Crimea we visited Bakhchysarai which is located in the dead center of the peninsula. The main tourist site is The Khan's Palace which is a mosque and palace originally constructed in the 16th century.

They have placed a small bust of Pushkin near the fountain that was his inspiration. I don't know about you but I'm not quite feeling the level of inspiration that he felt. On the other hand, give me a baseball card and I'm writing thousand word essays on the topic so you can take your inspiration where you can.

After seeing so many Orthodox churches around Ukraine it was a nice change of pace to see the minarets of a mosque on a lovely spring day.

After leaving the palace and heading down the road that runs in front of it we found an even larger monument to Alexander Pushkin. It made telling the cabby where we were located a whole lot easier.